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It isn't exactly that Marx was particularly prescient about Capitalism. Marx's prescience comes from his observation about the bourgeoisie.
I would encourage you to take an hour or so to re-read Marx's Communist Manifesto. I was never a Communist. I had a brief period - literally 10 weeks, or one semester at my first college - where I subscribed to what you might call "Socialism Lite". I reasoned that if everyone had their basic needs provided for them by the state, then the time they would have otherwise spent acquiring the necessities of existence could be reallocated towards higher level productivity. Imagine how much art we could create if no one had to work to eat. I worked out the flaw in that sort of thinking through the course of one class (much to the chagrin of my professor, whom I still regard as a vapid douche), and moved on. Ever since, academic or social encounters with anything influenced by Marx caused me much eye-rolling.
This wasn't exactly fair on my part, but it wasn't unprecedented. The number of self-described Communists that I met during my undergraduate who recognized Bakunin and Gramsci was exactly zero. With a handful of exceptions among well read and thoughtful friends who reside on the Left end of the political spectrum, I found college commies to be boring, unoriginal, and slightly more annoying than the handful of College Republicans I met.
On a whim, I bought Marx's Communist Manifesto for one dollar, and, reveling in the irony, spent one evening rereading it and taking notes. I gave Marx something better than the old college try by reading him as a reactionary, and had I not already rejected his solution as impossible, I may very well have been swept away from my longing for hierarchy and order and converted into a sort of Orwell-ish communist. By which I mean I would have looked upon the sum total of Leftism and despaired. The connections I made are disturbing, but not unprecedented. There is a particularly humorous exchange between Richard Spencer and some fat idiot where Spencer makes fun of the man's taste for being, as he called it, bourgeois.
The implementation (or attempt at implementation) of Communism is widely regarded as a failure. For those who do not see the raw kill count as evidence of Communism's impossibility, that Communism (or the attempt thereof) was always a revolution of intellectuals as opposed to the proletariat surely tips the scales towards Marx's designs as failed. The unfortunate history of Communism being relatively well known, there is little else to say in that regard. Where Marx curries some serious favor from people who otherwise regard Marx with the same enthusiasm you might hold for finding dog crap smashed in the treads of your boots is his thoughts on the bourgeoisie. You often hear this rephrased as "Communism doesn't work but Marx was correct in his criticism of Capitalism." If they've done their homework and aren't just repeating something they once heard, Capitalism refers to the behavior of the bourgeoisie. Most people leave out that seemingly small but extremely important detail.
Allow me to quote The Communist Manifesto liberally before we substantiate Marx's... correctness:
I would encourage you to take an hour or so to re-read Marx's Communist Manifesto. I was never a Communist. I had a brief period - literally 10 weeks, or one semester at my first college - where I subscribed to what you might call "Socialism Lite". I reasoned that if everyone had their basic needs provided for them by the state, then the time they would have otherwise spent acquiring the necessities of existence could be reallocated towards higher level productivity. Imagine how much art we could create if no one had to work to eat. I worked out the flaw in that sort of thinking through the course of one class (much to the chagrin of my professor, whom I still regard as a vapid douche), and moved on. Ever since, academic or social encounters with anything influenced by Marx caused me much eye-rolling.
This wasn't exactly fair on my part, but it wasn't unprecedented. The number of self-described Communists that I met during my undergraduate who recognized Bakunin and Gramsci was exactly zero. With a handful of exceptions among well read and thoughtful friends who reside on the Left end of the political spectrum, I found college commies to be boring, unoriginal, and slightly more annoying than the handful of College Republicans I met.
On a whim, I bought Marx's Communist Manifesto for one dollar, and, reveling in the irony, spent one evening rereading it and taking notes. I gave Marx something better than the old college try by reading him as a reactionary, and had I not already rejected his solution as impossible, I may very well have been swept away from my longing for hierarchy and order and converted into a sort of Orwell-ish communist. By which I mean I would have looked upon the sum total of Leftism and despaired. The connections I made are disturbing, but not unprecedented. There is a particularly humorous exchange between Richard Spencer and some fat idiot where Spencer makes fun of the man's taste for being, as he called it, bourgeois.
The implementation (or attempt at implementation) of Communism is widely regarded as a failure. For those who do not see the raw kill count as evidence of Communism's impossibility, that Communism (or the attempt thereof) was always a revolution of intellectuals as opposed to the proletariat surely tips the scales towards Marx's designs as failed. The unfortunate history of Communism being relatively well known, there is little else to say in that regard. Where Marx curries some serious favor from people who otherwise regard Marx with the same enthusiasm you might hold for finding dog crap smashed in the treads of your boots is his thoughts on the bourgeoisie. You often hear this rephrased as "Communism doesn't work but Marx was correct in his criticism of Capitalism." If they've done their homework and aren't just repeating something they once heard, Capitalism refers to the behavior of the bourgeoisie. Most people leave out that seemingly small but extremely important detail.
Allow me to quote The Communist Manifesto liberally before we substantiate Marx's... correctness:
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify.
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.If you look at that the right way, from the right angle, you just might be able to stuff an SJW into Marx's list of crimes committed by the bourgeoisie. This is, of course, something of a stretch, but it certainly coincides with the now almost banal conservative observation that Marxists typically have nothing to do with the working class, and are almost always academics, aspirants of the academic-industrial complex, or white collar workers who have passed through the ivory tower. Still, isn't it the slightest bit peculiar that the Marxism, a colossal failure in implementation, is now championed by people who we could charitably accuse of being bourgeois? What a strange fate.
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